The former German chancellor acknowledges her powerlessness in the face of the Russian president at the end of his reign
Former Chancellor Angela Merkel has acknowledged her powerlessness in the face of Russian President Vladimir Putin in the final months of her 16-year rule. During his farewell visit to Moscow in August 2021, he had the impression that his political persuasion had run out in the presence of the Russian president. “For Putin, only violence counts,” Merkel said in statements to the weekly magazine Der Spiegel. The former head of the Berlin executive also admits that the Minsk agreement, signed in 2014 after the Russian invasion of the Crimean peninsula and the independence uprising in Donbas to prevent the conflict between Ukraine and Russia from spiraling out of control, has already was “undermined”. 2021.
Merkel points out that she tried in vain that summer with French President Emmanuel Macron to organize a meeting between Putin and the European Union. And he admits that “I haven’t moved an inch. Not only when it comes to Ukraine. Transnistria and Moldova, Georgia and Abkhazia, Syria and Libya” were issues that urgently needed to be addressed, but on which the Russian president was already rigid in his position, as well as inaccessible to his Western interlocutors. The veteran conservative politician stressed that she agreed with former US President Barack Obama when it came to Putin’s assessment.
“After Russia’s annexation of Crimea, we did everything we could to prevent further Russian attacks on Ukraine and agreed our sanctions in detail,” said Merkel, who has been the subject of numerous criticisms in recent weeks for not has so far acknowledged no flaw in his policy towards Moscow during his four terms at the head of the German government. For the former chancellor, the invasion of Ukraine led by the Russian army last February and the war that has been raging on Ukrainian territory since then has ended “a euphoric phase” in history.
“Today we face a world riddled with complications,” emphasizes the former president of the Christian Democratic Union, for whom “history does not repeat itself, although I fear the bosses do. The horror vanishes with the witnesses of time. But the spirit of reconciliation also disappears. In the interview, Merkel explicitly praised the resistance of the Ukrainian people, who are under pressure from a much more powerful enemy, but she opposes Germany being the first country to equip the invaded country with modern main battle tanks, as Russia uses its advantage for propaganda .
He also expresses his respects to Kazakhstan’s President Kasim Yomart Tokaev for publicly stating that he does not support the war started by Putin and for welcoming tens of thousands of Russians who do not want to be recruited to fight in Ukraine. “It takes incredible strength to take on Russia,” says Merkel, for whom changes are taking place in the former Soviet republics of Central Asia against Russia. Finally, Merkel warns that one should not be too ambitious in foreign policy: “We must be careful not to set the bar too high if we do not want to end up with no one who can meet our demands.”
Source: La Verdad
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